Samuel Lewis Galindo Presidential Candidate in 1994 Died Sunday May 26
Samuel Lewis Galindo Presidential candidate in 1994 and founder of Solidaridad and Banistmo, passed away at 96 years of age on Sunday May 26th. Sr. Galindo contributed greatly to the politics and economy of Panama. His career included the merger of Solidaridad with other parties and the founding of the Banco del Istmo better known as Banistmo, associated with the mothership Bancolombia, the largest bank in Colombia. His funeral services will be held Tuesday, May 28 at 10:00 am in the San Lucas Evangelista parish in Costa del Este. His family has asked that no floral offerings be sent and that donations instead be made to the nonprofit organization Fundación Jesús Luz de Oportunidades, which promotes initiatives aimed at reducing and preventing violence in urban areas of Panama.
Lewis Galindo was part of the Lewis clan, as he himself used to refer to his family tree. Son of Samuel Lewis Arango and Raquel Galindo, he was born on June 4, 1927. He was the eldest of the fourth generation of Lewis’ born in Panama, tracing his heritage back to the arrival of an English citizen known as Louis Lewis. On his maternal side, he was a descendant of Inocencio Galindo, a Panamanian lawyer and businessman. His marriage to Itza Morgan Lewis, with whom he shared more than 80% of his life, gave rise to a family of seven children: Samuel (who died young), Enrique, Mario, Adriana, Roberto, Ricardo and Itza María; 14 grandchildren and 28 great-grandchildren.
On December 7, 1993, he founded the Solidarity Party, for which he was a presidential candidate in May 1994, in a contest in which seven candidates participated, finishing in penultimate place. In that election, in which Ernesto Pérez Balladares was the winner, Mireya Mocoso, Rubén Blades, Rubén Darío Carles, Eduardo Vallarino and José Salvador Muñoz also participated. Although he barely obtained 18,424 votes, his party survived thanks to the fact that he voted out several legislators, among them Laurentino Cortizo Cohen, today president of the Republic for the Democratic Revolutionary Party. In 2004, Solidaridad nominated former president Guillermo Endara (1989-1994) for the Presidency of the Republic, occupying second place, surpassed by Martín Torrijos (2004-2009).
In 2006, Solidaridad merged with Raúl Beby Arango’s Liberal Party, thus creating Unión Patriótica. In 2011, he contributed to the absorption of this group by Cambio Democrático, led by then-president Ricardo Martinelli (2009-2014). According to the current president-elect, José Raúl Mulino, it was Samuel Lewis who recommended him to succeed him as president of the party in 2005. Mulino and Cortizo were some of the politicians who highlighted Lewis Galindo’s career on Sunday. He was the uncle of Samuel Lewis Navarro, who was vice president and chancellor in the government of Martín Torrijos. In addition, he was the father-in-law of the businessman and politician of the Panameñista Party Alberto Vallarino, who aspired to the presidency of the Republic in 1999 and was Minister of Economy and Finance (2009-2011) during the Martinelli administration.
According to his official biography, his public life began in 1955 as a special ambassador to the meeting of Presidents of the American Republics. He was a councilman of Panama City in 1956 and a year later served as Panama’s alternate ambassador to the United Nations General Assembly. In 1984 and 1985 he was president of the National Investment Council. Meanwhile, in 1996, with the presidency of Pérez Balladares, he participated in the National Council of Foreign Relations. Between 1995 and 2006 he was director of the Panama Viejo Board of Trustees and between 2006 and 2007 he presided over the University of Panama Foundation. He also worked as a fellow journalist at the newspaper El País, where he was editor-in-chief and columnist. He had a blog titled “A Space to Reflect,” which he managed for several years. As a businessman, in the 1960s he was general manager of Industrias Panameñas SA and participated in the boards of directors of Industrias de Cartón Corrugado in Panama, Costa Rica and Guatemala.
Most of his professional life was spent at Cervecería Nacional, a company of which he was manager between 1970 and 1991 and vice president of the board of directors between 1991 and 2001. In 1984 he founded the Banco del Istmo (Banistmo), whose board of directors he chaired until 2006. Among other recognitions, he received the “Order of Vasco Núñez de Balboa”, the “Order of Merit” of Ecuador, and the Presidential distinction of the Chamber of Commerce, Industries and Agriculture of Panama. He wrote the books 900 Days: Collapse of a Dictatorship and The Puppet Strings: Internal Workings of a Political Campaign. He said that the two passions that served as seed and fertilizer for each of his endeavors were his homeland and his family. “Family is above everything and we must protect each other.”
